There are in the Boston Public Library five ponderous volumes
containing the evidence taken before a commission, appointed by the
English House of Lords, to examine into the sweating system of Great
Britain.
I think it is well for American laboring-men to know that this evidence puts beyond question the fact that the sweating business, while it may begin with the clothing trade, by no means ends there. "The plague of the sweatshop" is not something of interest to the tailors and sewing-women only, but is of equal importance to workers of every class. Take the matchbox trade; before the sweating days, the people who worked at it received two and three-fourths pence a gross. Now the large contractors let and sub-let until it is only one and a half pence a gross, and a woman and a family of children have to work all the week to make four or five shillings.
The fur trade in Europe has been largely driven into Whitechapel sweaters' shops. They call the sweater in this business a "chamber master," and in these foul chambers, in the midst of "bad smells, great heat, no ventilation, and fetid refuse," men and women swelter and die, the men getting ten shillings, and the women about five shillings a week.
[Illustration: THE PEANUTTER.]
The cabinet and upholstery trade is not exempt. Sub-contracting here, as in clothing, is the first step in sweating. The evidence shows that sweating began in this business as early as 1855, but has rapidly increased under pauper immigration from Italy and Russia since 1880. Much of the work is crowded into garrets and cellars, where there are no sanitary arrangements. So universally is this so, that the sweater in this business is called a "garret master." Wages have been brought down, from forty to fifty shillings a week, to from eighteen to twenty shillings.
The boot and shoe trade has had the same history. Large numbers of foreigners are employed in this work. The workers are kept in ignorance of the language and under surveillance, so as to be taken advantage of. They are not instructed in the more skilled work, and, to use the words of one of the witnesses, "are too crushed to resist." They are compelled to work from eighteen to twenty hours a day. Wages in these sweat-shops are from ten to fifteen shillings a week.
In Sheffield, the great cutlery manufacturing city, the same system is prevailing, and a woman whose business was awl-blade grinding, a strong woman of forty-five years of age, testified that she could only make six and a half shillings per week.
Military harness and accoutrements are also made by the sweaters. Many workmen earn only three pence an hour, and complain that they cannot live on it. The nail trade is in the same condition. A man and wife working together make thirteen shillings a week. Women's earnings average from three shillings and a half to six shillings per week.
Large numbers of women are only able to earn three shillings a week at this business. Boys and girls are paid, in a sweater's chain-shop, one-half penny per hour.
A witness from Glasgow testified in regard to the clothing shops of that city: "It is a rule among the sweaters to give the men some money, a shilling, every night, to keep them alive till the next day. Some of the men at the end of the week are actually in debt instead of having anything coming to them. When in debt, they do not, as a rule, come back, but go to another sweater. The men never actually get any wages, but are in debt from one year's end till another. All independence is taken out of the men; they are always in the sweater's power."